An FAQ About “How Lucky,” My Novel Coming May 11

You should read it. You would like it!

I have been very careful, in these regular pieces I’ve been writing for Medium for months now, not to go over the top with the promotion of my new novel, How Lucky, which will be released by Harper Books on May 11, next Tuesday. But with publication date so soon, I’m afraid I will no longer be so careful. I apologize in advance.

I have been asked a lot of questions about the book, and while we’ll be doing a publicity tour over the next fortnight, I thought a little Frequently Asked Questions primer might come in handy. Hopefully this helps you understand what this project is, and why I think you should buy the book. If you have further questions, or you are a media person who would like to do an interview, simply email howluckythebook@gmail.com. For now: Here’s the FAQ.

What’s the book about?

I’m not particularly skilled at, or even eager to be a part of, condensing a 304-page book I wrote into one paragraph, so I will let my friends at Harper do it:

For readers of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and Nothing to See Here, a first novel as suspenseful and funny as it is moving, the unforgettable story of a fiercely resilient young man named Daniel living with a physical disability, and his efforts to solve a mystery unfolding right outside his door.

That sounds interesting. Is this your first book?

It’s not. It’s my fifth. The first four, however, were written more than a decade ago: The ten-year break was mostly because I got married, had two children, moved across the country and generally kept busy writing constantly and didn’t have time set aside for book writing. Fortunately, the children got older and more autonomous. To be honest, I don’t even know where they are right now. I’m sure they’re fine.

This gap between books has caused difficulty in accurately classifying the book. It’s not a debut — I’ve written five books, after all. Three of those four books were non-fiction, but we can’t call it a fiction debut because I wrote a YA novel in 2005. (And it feels weird to say “adult fiction debut.”) I think they’d decided on “contemporary fiction.” The book world has a strange sort of…